I recently read the annual reports of two well know beverage companies in the UK: Diageo [1] and Fever Tree [2] to see if I could have some fun. I found them sober but they both slipped in a few unintentional nuggets of fun.
Despite being in the drinks industry the two are fond of landscaping. Fever Tree has two: a strong (their adjective) regulatory landscape and a geopolitical landscape. Diageo has many more: TBA landscape [3] which does NOT represent ‘to be announced’, consumer landscape, a volatile geopolitical landscape: a new word for hilly perhaps, an international tax landscape which no doubt shows a treacherous maze of footpaths leading to tax havens, a rapidly changing technological landscape, a UK executive pay landscape and a competitive one too. And many more, but the most unusual must be their shopper landscape.
As expected with landscapes the two companies leave footprints lying around, but never in the landscapes! Diageo leaves prints the world over with their global footprints: those visible from space, geographic footprints: those visible from the top of a mountain, operations and manufacturing footprints. They even went back and ‘refreshed’ their wieldy ‘total global physical risk footprint’ which was not deep and visible enough, but they did not refresh their market risk footprint, group risk footprint or company risk footprint. They leave two unusual footprints in their ‘value chain carbon footprint’ and ‘Scope 3 GHG emissions footprint’: a haze of footprints in the sky. The most surprising though has to be their ‘scotch footprint’: round prints showing that a glass of scotch came this way.
Fever Tree is more careful and does not leave as many prints. They are fond of carbon with their multiple carbon footprints and especially their ‘full corporate carbon footprint’. And they have two odd ones: packaging footprint and a footprint of bottlers.
After landscapes and footprints, headwinds come into the picture quite naturally. For once Fever Tree’s weather forecast is less windy than Diageo’s. It faces ‘relentless inflationary headwinds’ but good weather approaches easing the ‘significant margin headwinds’. Diageo, however, faces challenges from strong short-term headwinds and ‘potential headwinds from a pressured consumer wallet, cannabis and weight loss drugs’ which might, in the near or distant future, affect consumer patterns on alcohol consumption. Wow!
Both companies could make weather forecast out of their annual reports. Strong regulatory gusts sweep over the international tax landscape in the morning, followed by intermittent consumer headwinds which will clear the competitive clouds over the technology hills, revealing value chain carbon footprints, and giving a chance of sunshine in the shopper front in the afternoon.
Leaving the weather both companies excel in superlatives with premiums. Again Fever Tree is more subdued, but they do give us the recipe to make a three step perfect gin and tonic at the beginning of their annual report using their premium Indian tonic water. Naturally they have premium brands and premium products. Diageo goes much further in exaggeration with their super-premium, super-premium plus and ultra-premium drinks and they even invented a new word in the English language: ‘premiumisation’ which they scatter around their annual report. I also discover that one can ‘lean into’ premiumisation and have a premiumisation strategy.
We know that neither Diageo nor Fever Tree sat down intending to write comedy and yet they sprinkle the faintly absurd throughout their annual reports. I look forward to next year’s annual reports for two new segments the ‘super-premium-ultra plus’ and the ‘ultra- super-plus premium’. Hopefully footprints will be replaced by fingerprints, landscapes by a panorama and headwinds by a slight breeze.
[1] Diageo Annual Report 2025 https://www.diageo.com/tools/viewer.aspx?src=%2F%7E%2Fmedia%2FFiles%2FD%2FDiageo-V2%2FDiageo-Corp%2Finvestors%2Fresults-reports-and-events%2Fannual-reports%2F2025%2Fannual-report-2025.pdf
[2] Fever Tree Annual Report and Accounts 2024, https://fever-tree.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/results/downloads/01JSJ8K4YTR9W3A2G6B9ME8Q36.pdf
[3] Total Beverage Alcohol landscape – difficult to image what this could be.